Friday, May 19, 2017

Friday, today I put away 4 carts full of Russell Kirk (see yesterday's post) after checking and amending the finding aid. Over half of the collection is processed, but some of the unprocessed, once rehoused, will have to be interfiled. Here is a photo of the Kirk waiting to be processed, on the far right, bottom 4 shelves, and the next section of shelves to the left is all the Kirk that has been reprocessed and rehoused (almost a completely full 7 shelves-worth).

12 boxes of withdrawn materials were shredded today so I can finally see the floor. Since the used boxes will now be staying here without their contents, I suddenly have an excess of boxes.

I am also recycling the really old, beat up, or non-archival boxes.

So you can see I cleaned up the room.
Suddenly I can see the floor in most of the processing room for the first time in a year. Holy smokes! Next week our janitor, Dennis, will vacuum the now empty space for me. I can't wait!

Also I graciously got a AD-strip to check the level of acid in the Russell Kirk film. That has to sit for a week or two and then we'll know the results, but it looks like it is in pretty good shape to me.

Here is a description of the film:Film ID Number:
308-1 Format: 16mm, black and white, optical sound. Date: Film edge code
date: 1955 Size: 1000ft. Information off of film: Facts Forum /
Academic Freedom by RussellKirk.
Information off of original film leader: None. Overview of scenes:
Includes five men in suits, some smoking, behind desks, discussing
conservative political thought and RussellKirk’s new book, Academic Freedom. Men include: RussellKirk,
Prof. Hodges (first name unspecified); William F. Buckley, Jr.; George
H. Combs, Jr.; Hardy Burt (commentator). This was one in a series of
professionally produced television show funded by H.L. Hunt on
conservative political thought. This show was produced by Franka Hernan,
Vernon Lewis Productions, NYC. This is a user copy, which generation
is unknown. Physical Information: .04 film shrinkage, X out of X on the
AD strip acidity scale [being tested] – by Jen Bentley, spring 2015.
Miscellaneous information: None.

I also got tab dividers by myself for the Weaver binder, which has all the finding aids for the completed series in it. Supplies and equipment budget cuts left me without tabs. The binder looks good and the material in the finding aid is now easier to use with tab dividers if researchers want to view the paper. I also got all the processed series encoded this month and they'll be Google-searchable by the middle of next month. That will make Justice Weaver's papers more widely available to the public.